Friday, July 18, 2003

As is the probably the obvious thing to do when travelling to a city a lot older and prettier than the city one lives in, I've suddenly become aware of this phenomenon called "architecture". I haven't paid much attention to it in the past, though it's clearly a significant part our conceptual landcapes. ("conceptual landscapes" has GOT to be the wrong term there-I sound like I'm describing an assignment to art school students) I'm not really aware of any particular "great works" of writing about architecture. I really like Tom Wolfe's From Bauhaus To Our House, but that's more of a distinctly Wolfe-ian critique; stylistic, flamboyant, overeducated and overopinionated. Of course, that is why I like it. But that's the type of writing that reveals more about the Subject of criticism than the Object, if it can be said that that is not already true for all social criticism. It's also not widely accepted by architects, to say the least. (They think it's total shit-talking, to say a little more.) There's also Richard Humphrey's "The Shock of The New" which is significantly influential from my understanding. It's also the prototypical "text without a medium",a book that was crafted as a possible television series and thus cuts around its own textual corners, and a television series that is editted significantly from its print source. The whole project lingers awkwardly between mediums, a fact that would either make Marshall Mcluhan break into spontaneous orgasm or throw up into a gunney sack. So if any of you reading this know good books about architecture, let me know! You know where to find me.

The Berkeley Library here on Trinity's campus is really quite wonderful. I am going to go there right now.